• District transformation starts with streets, blocks

    La Plaza District looks like many suburban commercial areas, but a new street plan would enable incremental change into a mixed-use, walkable downtown gateway.
    La Plaza District in Rogers, Arkansas, looks similar, in many ways, to a thousand other suburban commercial districts—situated at the crossroads of two arterial roads. Around the 8 th and Walnut streets intersection are large strip malls—including one that used to house the nation’s first Walmart—...Read more

  • New life for Savannah Legacy Project

    CNU-sponsored plan shows how Southside Savannah could grow by retroffiting an abandoned mall and other sites across from a university campus.
    The Savannah Mall redevelopment/Southside town center plan is one of the more creative CNU Legacy Projects. It envisions the redevelopment of a large indoor shopping mall and other underutilized commercial properties by applying the classic, historic patterns of Savannah, Georgia. Due to the...Read more

  • To build a center on a former mall

    A mixed-use center is the best way to maximize value from a vacant mall site, but it requires proactive city leadership, as seen in Huntsville.
    MidCity District in Huntsville, Alabama, is a 140-acre mixed-use development on the site of the former Madison Square Mall, built in 1984. As the name implies, it is centrally located to the sprawling Rocket City and its largest employment centers, about three miles west of downtown. The District...Read more

  • For the love of mimosas, see Mashpee Commons

    Cape Cod boasts many things, including the first conversion of a sterile strip mall to a village center. It’s a model for what to do with thousands of dead and dying malls.
    My first professional work out of college was on Cape Cod in the 1980s. I read National Geographic, and I loved the photos of village architecture and the picturesque harbors featured in their coverage of the region. Having grown up and studied in Pennsylvania, I had a romantic notion of New...Read more